Needing to Build "Purpose Specific" Mac Tower -- Waves MultiRack Native Software Host

Hello,

I am working on Integrating Waves MultiRack Native into a Sound Mixing Environment. The Software Itself is not Heavy. It connects to an External Interface via Firewire 400 or 800.This interface provides 28 Channels in and 32 Channels out.

Here is my need:
I'm currently running this software with Success on a 27" iMac with a 2.93 Ghz i7. I have figured out that the software DOES NOT multithread. The Lower I can run the CPU Usage, the Lower I can have Latency for Live mixing. Currently I'm limited to a Minimum latency of around 10 ms. With a faster CPU theoretically I can cut that in half. Buying a Real Mac Pro seems like a waste of money based on what I know about the software.

Because of the Lack of Multithreading, I really don't need a ton of Cores, Rather I need a really fast signal core. As far as GPU and other system components, They do not need to be super powerful. Just a fast CPU.

Does anyone have suggestions on where to start. I would like this to be a "purpose specific" machine and Hopefully save money by doing so. I attempted to use the Windows version in an effort to use a pre-existing machine... The windows version is much more latency and much more poor performance.

I'm assuming something like the i7-4790K and a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD7 with Thunderbolt to Firewire Adapter.
8 GB of memory should be plenty and the software runs Fine on 10.9 or 10.10.
If I could keep the Build under $500 it would be Ideal.

Do I have to buy an External Video card or could I use the Built in one? Stability is of the UPMOST importantce.

Thanks in advance

if you dont need loads of cores, why not just get a 4690k, a massive cooler, and overclock it till it cries for mercy

I'm definitely willing to do that. However, The last "mac" i built was in 2010. I've not done it in so long, i'm not sure what motherboards, etc are known to be Solid for this sort of application.

Do you have any specific suggestions? Something cheaper than the one I Posted earlier?

Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD7

Click to expand...

Also Do I need to worry about a Vid card or does the built in card from the Proc work well on Mac? Is there something newer that would be worth looking at?

My biggest concern is stability. I cannot be in the middle of a show and have this thing kernel panic. Just trying to be diligent and learn from all that have already done this as apposed to "learning the hard way".

I also read that some people had trouble over-clocking and controlling heat with OS 10.10. Some had success, others couldn't get the OS to read the OC etc. Is this related to a specific board? Would I be better to use OS 10.9? It isn't as Memory Hungry.

Thanks so much

As far as graphics, I suggest starting with the integrated gpu because they work under 10.9 and 10.10 and you can always add a real gpu later if you really need it. It will use some system ram as opposed to VRAM but it doesn't use CPU cycles that you want to save for your audio.

I had an Intel HD 3000 running under 10.9 just fine. I don't remember when OS X started supporting iGPUs for sure, I think it was 10.7 so you should be good. You can do the 10.9 install on the iGPU also.

(Audio requirements are always funny to me since I remember motu making 24 channels In and Out run on a G3 350 in the 1990s. Now with chips 10x faster and 4x more cores we worry about getting still 32 channels in and out. /endRant )

Thank you! That is great to know about the the GPU.

What about a motherboard? Any Specific Recommendations?

And I know right! Must be the power of the old PPC processors or maybe we continue to add tons of overhead. My goal right now is to get the sample rate down to about 32 Samples at 48k. Right now i'm running at 64. If I can get down to 32, I should be able to do all of my live processing under 10ms Round trip (From Analog in on board to House Mix out)

Are you sure multirack isn't multithread? On my hacks tosh all cores and threads light up no problem from multirack, the load is spread evenly across all cores/threads. It is only 32bit at this stage.

@anacondaq I believe you are correct. It actually is a multithread program. I checked activity monitor and it had 104 threads at one point.

However. When I look at the CPU usage reported in the software. It seems to be the equivalent of the 1st core's usage. Because of this, I reasoned that the heavy lifting is limited to one core. However I could certainly be wrong

How does your hackintosh do with multirack? Are you using a FireWire interface? Any recommendations? How low of a sample rate can you run stably?

Hi again, I have confirmed it is deffinanetly multicore, a guy that builds upgraded mac pro's for video editing checked it out for me and spoke to waves about it. Waves are annoyingly vague about things like this sometimes.

Also on my system, Multirack will show up to and above 400 percent cpu usage which indicates it is using all 4 cores, and activity monitor will light up all 8 threads. The max I can use before audible glitches is about 370 percent but never the less the system performs on par with the soungrid extreme server.

I think the best option at the moment for this application is a Mac Pro 12 core, with dual x5690's. The geek bench on these systems is over 30k, compared to my current 3770 system which only gets 13 or 14k.

Its cheaper than a 6 core 5960x system and is native, although the performance would be similar.

@Anacondaq this is great information! I'm currently using a 2012 27" iMac. Today we had 1 audio breakup mid-servic. I was running 13 racks (Including Lead Vocals). Currently I'm running at 64 samples, which is 4.5 ms round trip in/out of PM5D via ADAT through MOTU 896mk3. I was thinking about building a 4790k system, but based on the information you received from Waves, this seems like it would be more beneficial to use a High Count MultiCore/MultiCPU System.

If I end up having to spend the money on something like a Mac Pro 12 Core. I think I may just buy a Sound Grid Server Bundle for $2000 that would handle all the plugins I could throw at it. Should cut the Round Trip in half and be more stable than my current setup. I could also purchase an additional Y16 Card and still be under the cost of some of the 12 Core Mac Pros on Ebay.

I do have 2 Mac Pro 5,1 Machines (one is a 2010 and one is a 2012) but they are both Single CPU. The upgrade for the Dual core is between 1700 - 1900. Still tough to justify.

Thoughts?